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We are very excited and very proud to present you our first Tape Box, long in the making and finally ready. “Delineation” enfolds four tapes including Remixes and Reinterpretations of Midira tracks, starting from MD 001 Nadja & N over to MD 023 Architeuthis Rex.

Releasing music means friendship to us. Being friends with musicians and being friends of their music. Thinking about that strong connection, we asked our artists and friends if they would be interested in reworking tracks from the Midira catalogue. The results were overwhelming for us, so that we started working out a convenient compound, to assemble all those new tracks we´ve got back from the artists. We decided to give the tracks the space they need and made a box with 4 tapes featuring 13 tracks.

“Delineation” comes as a four tape box, bound by a heavy grey cardboard banderole with letterpressed artwork, which can be folded out. The letterpress artwork – made by letterpress77 – has a very cool visual and haptic appearance and the moon cutting has kind of a 3-D effect when you unfold it. The tapes are housed in handmade grey cardboard sleeves with four different die-cut artworks. The tapes come in a transparent orange colourway. Every tape features an inlay card, on 600g cardboard, pressed by four layers of paper, with an orange core. A supplemental fifth inlay card, with a black core, completes the credits.

Once again Aidan Baker joins forces with a drummer, this time with Karen Willems of Inwolves from Belgium. A very intense musical collaboration, with a massive Studio output, starting with this EP called “Landlos”.

“Landlos” features two 14minutes tracks that sputter sounds out the guitar and drumset in a way that you like to listen in a never ending loop. It´s freejazz, it´s ambient, it´s progressive-kraut-rock, it´s whatever you discover.

Baker & Willems create an aura of fragile sounds that cocoon a soundweb, forming out those two tracks. You have to listen carefully to get every aspect of the sound, there is so much room in this music to be filled by your imagination.

Some years ago, when we (Cosima & Dimi) visited a live performance of Dirk Serries Microphonics, he asked us, if we ever will marry and we answered, that if we do, Dirk had to play a wedding concert for us. Back then, it was just a running joke. Well, finally we ended up with a wedding band consisting of our three favorite artists Dirk Serries, N and Aidan Baker.

“Enomeni” (which is greek and means “connected”) is a document of a very special live performance. Aidan Baker, N and Dirk Serries came together for the first time to play an improvised live session. The result is an one hour session, divided into four tracks, which show up an impressively increasing soundjourney with accentuating moments, ending up in a massive drone with squeaking and buzzing guitars.

The set starts very cautious and you can hear how the three musicians are coming together to build up an epic track, in which they find their perfect roles. Aidan Baker takes over the rhythm section by looping some sweeping sounds, N builds up a valley of ambient and drone sounds with hills, mountains and endless horizons and Dirk Serries rounds up everything by accompanying both or bringing in some accents like bowed guitar sounds. Like mentioned before everything ends up in an encore which also could bring you in mind, that they were joined by members of Sunn o))) or Earth for a big drone finale.

The set was mastered for vinyl by Fear Falls Burning (Dirk Serries), being divided into four tracks, each one hosted on one 12inch side. The artwork is made by N, using photos by Cosima made in Greece during the church wedding vacations.

The record comes as a double vinyl in an edition of 250 copies, housed in a gatefold sleeve, printed inside out with an incredible hand feel. We have 150 copies on black vinyl and a limited edition of 100 coloured copies.

The limited edition copies are printed colour in colour, bringing you an amazing scene like an island surrounded by fog from the bird’s eye view. Not to mention, that every single copy has it´s own colour gradient.

After different collaborations between Aidan Baker and other musicians, we are finally presenting you the first solo release by Aidan Baker on Midira Records. We are very proud to bring you this little piece of art called “Dualism”.

The album starts like an untamed beast with dark drone and doom sounds and it morphs into a very gentle floating ambient body. Aidan plays guitar, bass and drums, what makes the tracks sound structured but also disengaged at the same time. The all-instrumental tracks have Nadja-like moments when the sound is darker and doomy and then they transform to beautiful melodies and rhythms. So you can hear the album moving from darkness to light, from heaviness to easiness and from interlaced to clear textured. Sometimes you feel like dancing, sometimes you feel like head-banging, sometimes you feel just relaxed and all sounds and moods fit perfectly together.

Listen to two tracks from “Dualism”:

The album is based on the theory of dualism. A theory enfolding several books and explanation, including different meanings. That´s what Aidan Baker thought about the Dualism theory referring to this recording:

“Dualism in philosophy refers to the theory that the mind and body are different things and while the body is necessarily part of the physical world, the mind (and thoughts) may or may not be associated with a physical, concrete reality… and the notion of a ‘consciousness bridge’ is the way one might attempt to bridge the gap, so to speak, between body and mind.”

We thought that is a nice concept, but then something unforeseeable happened. The Dualism theory overgrew the whole release project. After we decided to press the music on CD, the master tapes got lost. We were talking about what we can do, because everything was set up to be released. So Aidan Baker decided to re-record the album. After he recorded the album, the original recordings showed up again by coincidence. So we had two Dualism albums sounding completely different, both worth to be released. We decided to release both sessions as Session A and B. A circumstance fitting perfectly into the dualism theory. Then we were waiting for the CD to be finalized with a matt finished artwork. The parcel arrived from the plant, but accidentally with glossy artwork. We started to believe that there is a hex of dualism covering this project. But finally, we finished the album with 2 CDs and a handsome matt lamination.

To perfect the album package, we added a letterpress inlay including a poem by Aidan Baker (from Passing Through) and an antithetic version of the cover artwork. Manufactured by Letterjazz with some very old letterpress machines.
Some more dualism trivia in this context: The alphabetic characters A and B of both sessions does not only fit to the artist name but also to the name of our contact person at the letter press studio. Dualism fortuity.

Dualism comes as a double CD album in an edition of 200 copies housed in a 6 panel digipack, including a letterpress inlay on 650 gram LeNaBoard (grey cardboard).

And if that is not special enough for you, we have 50 deluxe editions housed in a grey handmade canvas pouch including a third CD featuring “Consciousness Bridge (Dual Version)”. A 21 minutes mixed version of the first track combining the guitar tracks of both sessions, bringing another dualism aspect to the whole package.

Talking about the package. The beast artwork is made by Phillipp Kunze, who also did the artwork for Aidan Bakers “Cameo” album. Our graphic designer Katharina Woltering finally made the whole arrangement, that combines different graphical dualism elements.

Caudal is the self named “Trance Punk Trio” from Berlin featuring Aidan Baker (guitars), Felipe Salazar (drums) and Gareth Sweeney (bass). They already released two records with Oaken Palace Records and Consouling Sounds, showing their love for instrumental pulsative rock music with a pinch of experimental sounds.

To be honest, we where not the biggest fans of this trio until we heared the track “Murk” for the first time. “Murk” is like the black sheep in the Caudal repertoire. The track is more doomy, more slowly, more menacing… of everything they recorded before. So we thought it would be great to highlight this 15minutes track with this 12inch EP release.

The EP comes in a matt black cardboard sleeve with a label hole, coloured record labels and the vinyl itself comes in a dookie brown semitransparent colour. Nearly 30 minutes of music from the Caudal cosmos.

Limited to 125 copies.

Tracklist:
A – Murk
B – Krum

Maybe you have an idea what you can will find on the B-Side of the record, if you look on the track title.

We are very happy to announce this limited release. This Tape is the last document in a series of three impressive performances that got recorded in the “Christuskirche Bochum” in Germany. The first performance is the live set by A-Sun Amissa (MD 004), which you can download on our bandcamp for free, the second one is the live improvisation “Cameo” by Aidan Baker & Maik Erdas (MD 006) which you can order in our store and finally comes the improvised live collaboration by Aidan Baker & A-Sun Amissa featuring Maik Erdas on Drums.

What you can here on the Tape is the result of a spontaneous idea to play a collaboration as a quintet. A slowly growing piece, swelling and floating. Three guitars, viola and drums steady united into a 22minutes long piece that evokes different moods. Just listen to “17.02.2012 DE” and find out for yourself:

The Tape comes in a limited edition of 99 pieces in three different handmade and hand-die-cutted cardboard sleeves: 33 in graphite-black, 33 in medium-grey and 33 in deer-orange, made out of 300g cardboard. The Tape is pea-green and includes a 450g inlay card and a download code.

The B-Side of the Tape includes “25.02.2012 FR”. This is a collaboration track by Aidan Baker and A-Sun Amissa that got previously released digitally (free download) on Drowning.cc.

Looking back to the same time one year ago, a new Band called B / B / S/– a trio consisting of Aidan Baker, Andrea Belfi and Erik Skodvin – started a tour to promote their debut album “Brick Mask” (Miasmah). They also played a show in Bochum at the Christuskirche Bochum, that luckily was recorded.

Now, one year later, we are proud to announce the second B / B / S/ album called “Coltre / Manto”. It is based on the church recordings made in 2013. Andrea Belfi mixed the tracks and finally Martyn Heyne mastered the album in Berlin, with a breathtaking result of massive sound collages and dramatical sound progressions. The sounds move from ambient based improvisations to impressive krautrocking soundwalls made by two guitars, drums and filigrane electronics. Compared to the debut album, the band is moving forward to challenge more experimental but catchy soundscapes.

Tracklist:
A: Coltre (16:57)
B: Manto (19:55)

If you like the solo releases of the three bandmembers and the records they did with Nadja and Deaf Center, you will love this record, honestly!

You can listen to Coltre here:

The album will be released on black vinyl in an edition of 250 records including a download code.

Last year when Aidan Bakerreleased his Album “The Spectrum Of Distraction” including collaborations with 18 different drummers, he went on tour with A Sun Amissa to support his album.

This circumstance was the birth of an idea to do a show with Aidan Baker and a drummer. The guys over at thepostrock.de invited Aidan to do an improvisational show with Maik Erdas (former drummer of disbanded experimental Doom Trio Kodiak) in a church in Bochum (Germany).

The result was a 50 minutes long set full of different kinds of soundideas. Beginning with smooth melodies and rhythms, changing to experimental blueprints ending in an epic wall of doom sounds.

We are very proud to present you the documentation of this very unique evening. Aidan Baker put some final hands on the masters and the result is “Cameo”, a Vinyl + CD release. The vinyl contains the first and the last part of the set and the CD completes the package including the whole set from the church show.

The CD comes in a thick full colour paper wallet, with a full colour cd-onbody print. The vinyl comes in black with full colour labels housed in a stunning artwork by Phillip Kunze. Take a close look at the whole artwork and the details will keep some surprises ready. Just preorder your copy and you will find out…